


The stars don't even matter

by narfiffiftic (maladictive)



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Blood, Child In Danger, Gen, Injury, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 04:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maladictive/pseuds/narfiffiftic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The family meets a not-so-all-new member named Robin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The stars don't even matter

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Black & Gold by Sam Sparro
> 
> Based on a prompt by Fourofthem on tumblr, and basically: ”ok ok ok deaged and/or blast from the past dick grayson meeting all the modern batlosers and being ok first of all i’m not memorizing your names all the boys are cindy all the girls are fred second of all bruce baby you can’t collect orphans third of all you’re all so grumpy lighten up you butts (also angst and everyone finding out that he wasn’t actually all happy sunshine rainbows the end)”

They were all expecting something, a golden ideal; some sort of walking  _legend,_ something that someone, somewhere, had placed on a pedestal for the rest of them to watch.

But what Damian found lying on the ground of the wharfs, bleeding and surrounded by unconscious bodies, it wasn’t what he might have expected.

It was a thousand times worse than any of that.

-

“Don’t touch me.”

The boy forces himself up, his eyes screwed shut (pain?), and the moment Damian sees the simple, almost comical cloth mask, torn to expose the rest of that face, he knows.

It’s the strange nose, the eyebrows, and that eerie sharpness from the old photographs. Only it’s  _real._

“ _Grayson?_ ” Damian breathes.

Suddenly the unfocused eyes are on him, and Damian doesn’t— he  _can’t_  react fast enough.

The boy moves impossibly quick, more than all those injuries should allow, then the kick lands, and Damian’s head hits the pavement.

_No names in the field._

The strange robin falls back down to his knees, holding his chest and breathing hard, spent, eyes shut again.

Damian gets up slowly, he watches the boy closely, ready to take him on this time, but there’s no need for that. The sudden movement and blood loss have weakened the stranger, and Damian watches him succumb entirely.

He doesn’t bother catching him, and he barely winces at the wet sounds of blood and cloth hitting cold ground. If  _his_  Dick were here, he’d squeeze Damian’s shoulder in comfort, but anyone else?

To anyone else Damian is unaffected.

He accesses the comms, almost stoically watching the mess of red, green and yellow.

“I found him.”

Batgirl is the only one that answers besides Batman, and there’s a resounding silence from the ever-vigilant Red Robin.

After eight minutes of careful watching there comes a flash of purple and black, some gold, and then Damian lets himself breathe.

-

“How did he get  _all_  those injuries?” Tim’s watching Damian closely, and his tone isn’t accusing, but it’s  _carefully_  not accusing. “All of them were from the smugglers? No one else?” Tim wants a villain behind this, he wants to point at something and give it a  _reason_. 

“He had them when I found him, they were sustained before I got there, by the culprits me and Batgirl reported,”

“Oh?”

“ _Are you implying that I—“_

“Both of you be quiet,” Bruce says quietly, a bit distractedly, he’s checking the boy’s molars and fingers, and Alfred’s also taking his blood pressure.

It’s bloody work.

“These aren’t from a heavy hitter, they’re from a fight he wasn’t ready for."

“Yeah, but he definitely won,” Steph offers, resisting the urge to give Tim a look. “And we already know the guys were carrying all  _sorts_  of serums, that’s obviously what made him… tiny.”

"Tiny, and not Nightwing. This is clearly Robin." 

There’s the expected stretch of silence, and then Tim squashes it, pragmatically.

“We should at least wash the blood off, before it dries on him, I’m pretty sure that’s at  _least_  a level two biohazard.”

Bruce gets to work on that, diligently, and Steph watches him tiptoe around the tiny stranger.

-

Steph comes to the conclusion that everyone in Wayne Manor that isn’t herself, Cass or Alfred is entirely inept _._

Damian won’t go near the med bay, and then he won’t go near the bedrooms when they move Dick up there, he won’t so much as look at the boy. He refers to the child as the ‘other Grayson’, and it’s impersonal. He’s carefully unattached.

Tim is being a first-class, repressed _butt,_  carrying on only marginally better than Damian, but at least he’s  _trying,_ and Bruce is adorably (stupidly, unhelpfully) awkward and professional.

Dick is going to wake up to the worst rendition of the word  ‘family’ that the world has ever seen, and Steph pities him. 

When it becomes clear that she and Cass are the only ones at least  _willing_  to make this work, she decides it’s probably her divine duty to do more than her share.

It’s getting physically painful to watch the three stooges mope.

-

Dick doesn’t trust any of it. The first thing he saw when he woke up was Alfred, and that was  _welcome_ , but he felt his heart ache. He had never thought of Alfred as something that wasn’t constant before, because Alfred was Alfred, the one who reminded him that he didn’t have to be alone, that he needn’t hide, and now…

Alfred is old.

Bruce has gray hairs.

The batcave is  _crowded_.

“They’re… family,” Bruce says to him.

There’s brothers, he has  _sisters,_ and it’s not…

It’s not what he expected to have. It should be what he had always dreamed of having, but within an hour he’s just not buying it.

He’s alone in the room he recognizes, (it’s crowded now, there’s a lot of… stuff, everywhere, and only a few things are familiar. The telescope is the only thing he recognizes), and no one’s here, they’re not  _here_ , they’re whispering and arguing, and he’s alone.

Bruce is busy figuring out what to do, he left Dick, and it was horribly awkward. Bruce put his hand on Dick’s shoulder, a bit of a comfort, but then he removed it quickly, and it was just… weighty.

Dick hates it.  

There’s only one visitor that sits with him like Alfred does, only one that he can breathe around.

“When did the future start sucking?” He asks her.

“I ask myself that sometimes, but it’s not too bad, we’re all doing well, considering." Her name is Stephanie, she’s his sort of sister, and he loves her. She’s bright, like sunlight, but there’s something strong about her, like fire.

He feels safe, liked, and it’s much more familial than anything else he’s encountered so far.

He still doesn’t know why she decided to come sit with him, but when she comes in, tailing after Alfred, it feels like he has a chance. 

-

“So, where’s all the blood?” He’s rambling, but his stomach hurts and his ribs ache, he’s allowed that. They’re flipping through the channels, and it’s nearly bedtime for him, according to Bruce. Dick can’t help but hate the thought of sleep. 

For a lot of reasons. 

“We cleaned you up.”

He tries to remember why he was bleeding, why his eyes were shut with pain, why he remembers someone’s fists on him, but that’s just it: he can’t remember  _why._

“Can’t remember,” he groans, because he’s tried to; he’s  _tried so hard_   _to remember_.

“I can remember Bruce, and Gordon and Alfie, but I can’t remember this morning.” He feels his breaths quicken, “I remember  _fighting_ , Steph, I remember the last case, but I can’t remember what I had for lunch, or what my homework was, or… I don’t think I’m—” He keeps talking, but it’s not entirely English anymore, but it’s heavily accented, as though it’s half forgotten, and Steph tries to remember if their Dick panics in another language.

Not around them he doesn’t.

Steph pats his back a bit, maybe a little awkwardly.

“Would you like me to get Bruce?”

Dick calms down, or at least he seems to, he switches back to an English she understands.

“No, no it’s okay, I’m okay.”

Steph hums a bit, and then when the phone at her side rings with a ‘text’ from Bruce, telling her it’s Dick’s bedtime, she gets up.

“I’ll be back tomorrow, little D, sweet dreams.”

She leaves, and Dick stares after her eyes wide.

_Little D._

He suddenly wants very desperately to go with her.

-

“Yo.” Steph tries to emit a positive ‘I’m not here to drag you in to the authorities’ vibe.

“Get off my roof, I want nothing to do with  _anything_  you’re here for.” Jason Todd leans out the window, a chipped mug of coffee in hand and a scowl on his face.

“Oh come on, I know you’re in touch with Red Robin.”

“That’s for business, and trust me, it’s every bit as annoying as this conversation.”

“If you think this is a conversation, I weep for you.”

“What do you want? Why are you here?” Jason leans further over the windowsill, because Steph has since leaned back, and he needs to keep an eye on her.

She’s a tough one to keep track of.

“Dick is tiny,”

“Dang, well, I can’t help you with that.”

“Dick is  _little, like, Robin again little,_  he showed up beaten bad, and I’m pretty sure he took Damian down a little too easily, also he’s angry,”

“At who?”

“At everything, I think, and I’m here because you know him differently than we do, so tell me about him.”

“I didn’t know him when he was a kid, but yeah, you’re right.”

She waits, watches him closely. He’s looking down at the street, or maybe into the depths of his espresso, and he’s ignoring her.

“He’s a dirty cheater, don’t wrestle, don’t spar, don’t  _anything_ , with him.” Jason gets up off the sill, pauses, says “He calls it big brother privilege,” and disappears.

Steph mulls that over. How anti-climactic.

She waits a minute or two, biting her lips against the cold.

Jason shows up at the window again, leans out, frown in place and cheeks slightly pink.

“Also he told me once all about his circus, he said he wanted that again, but that he was happy.”

She waits a bit, and says nothing, because she’s starting to see how Jason Todd works.

“He probably wants us all to be… happy, with everyone together and… like some sort of sitcom, maybe. He’s dangerous, okay?”

“How’s that dangerous?”

“He’s probably turning them right now. Dick doesn’t stay down long, or he didn’t when I was Robin, at least.”

He pauses a bit, and then looks at her properly.

“But who knows really, I mean, I got him after Bruce, and you all got him after Tim and me, what do any of us know?”

Steph kicks some snow in his face.

She doesn’t need that sort of negativity right now.

-

Tim grabs her by the shoulders when she gets back, his eyes nearly wild, and she expects the worst.

“Is he back to normal?” He asks.

“How would I know?” She’s almost disappointed, because she wanted  _time_.

“What? You mean he isn’t with  _you?”_ Tim looks horrified.

“No, he’s not, I left him in his room!”

“That means he really is in the caves, just like Cass thinks.” Tim looks extremely put upon, and Steph makes to follow him, to help them look, but someone holds her back.

It’s Cass.

“What?”

Cass only puts a finger on her lips, and waits.

Steph waits for Tim, Damian and Bruce to leave, watches them rush away, and she waits for Cass to explain.

“He’s getting to know us.”

Steph raises her eyebrows in confusion.

“He was in our rooms, exploring, he’s done now, but I told the others that he wanted to come down here and explore in order to distract them.”

“So they’re…”

“They’re spelunking. Bonding, and Dick’s getting to know his family, without—“

“Without the royal assery of the actual family.”

Steph snorts, thinking of the panicked bats with their flashlights, down in the caves yelling for their half monster.

“I don’t know what they’re more scared of: finding him, or  _not_  finding him."

-

They go straight to the bedrooms, and the yelling begins.

Actually, it was more likely that it had begun already, and they just wandered in on it. It’s coming from Dick’s bedroom.

“YOU ASSHOLE!”

“I’M ELEVEN, YOU CAN’T CALL ME THAT,”

“I’LL CALL YOU WHAT I LIKE!”

“You sure you’re a grown up?” Dick’s voice is too much, young and accusing, but the scene itself is definitely something.

Jason’s red hood is shattered, lying in splinters on the ground, and he’s screeching in Dick’s face, and there’s Dick standing toe-to-toe with him, bawling right back.

It’s fantastic, it’s the stuff of legend, and Steph is pretty sure she’s watching pure and unadulterated _history._

“What happened to your hood, Jason?” Cass is to the point, smiling only faintly at the scene.

“HE SHATTERED IT!”

“HE HAD A GUN AND HE WAS BEING CREEPY, he climbed in through the  _window,_ ” Dick glowers, his fists shaking only a little, “I had every right.”

There’s an awkward pause, and Steph looks closely at the splinters of red on the ground, and the scratches on Jason’s face. There’s a dent in the floorboards.

“Did… did he break it while it was on your head?”

“He flipped onto me,  _landed on me_ , and then…” Jason stops, realizing how pathetic all this makes him sound.

“I was justified, and okay, there’s a safe right here. I bet there’s money in it, like you could take that and I dunno, fix your stupid mask?”

“Gee, thanks, that’s exactly what I need, your dirty money,”

“You’re welcome!” Dick’s grin is blinding, “I bet I can break into it for you!”

“You’re a monster.”

Steph groans, covering her face, “You realize they’re cave-hunting for him? Like, right now? I feel bad, Cass, they’re actually pretty worried.”

Cass just smirks.

“Tim needed time, and Damian wasn’t helping, and Dick, it turns out, is a highly capable hider.”

“So we’re just letting them panic?”

“No, I’ll text Bruce and tell him, that we’re keeping Dick for us.”

“What’s going on?” Jason asks. “Who’s panicking? Who’s ‘ _we’_ and _‘us’?_ ”

-

Dick finds three siblings, and loves each of them,

Even Jason. Despite his habit of rolling his eyes at every exclamation Dick lets out.

Dick tries to curse like him, but finds that he’s really just not cut out for it

-

Dinner that night is only survivable because of Steph and Cass.

Dick is sore and hurting, and Alfred is gentle and caring, but Bruce is on the other end of the table, asking too many questions about the gash in Dick’s side. It’s like it was earlier, it’s choking, and he wants to go back to his room, to when it was just him and the girls and Jason.

He liked Jason because, strangely enough, he didn’t ask questions, and after he picked up the shards of his own helmet off the ground, after he wiped the blood from his face, he had whistled low, under his breath. He had looked up at Dick from where he was kneeling; eyebrows raised, and he had said ‘nice one, asshole,’ like they weren’t strangers, like they were just picking up where they left off.

It makes Dick feel real.

He feels dangerously like a ghost around the others.

(He still can’t remember, can’t recall anything beyond facts like those on a trading card, he doesn’t  _remember)_

The boy that found him just picks at his food, recites mechanically the events of Dick’s ‘finding’ and the other calmly listens.

Neither of them look at Dick, not once.

Dick rubs his arms, he’s cold, and he just wants someone to tell him he’s there.

-

Tim stands outside the room for ten minutes before deciding it’s safe. He opens the door marginally, and peers in.

The boy is staring out the window, it’s thrown open wide, Dick’s face is rapt, and Tim feels a spark of affection for the little brat.

“Uhm, hey?”

The boy doesn’t jump, of course he doesn’t, he just tilts his head towards the door, watching Tim.

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure.” He turns away from the window, fidgets as Tim sits on the edge of the bed.

“What’s your name?”

Tim freezes, because it hits him that Bruce probably didn’t give Dick names, not when he had just woken up, and then things had gotten out of hand and

They didn’t even introduce themselves to him.

“What have you been calling us?” Tim kicks himself mentally, because he should have covered every base, but he didn’t even realize that  _Dick didn’t know him_ , and didn’t that just bring back memories? It’s gotten so that they’re basically useless without Dick, in a familial sense.

“I’ve been calling the girls Fred and the boys Cindy, keeps it all real simple.”

“Liar.”

“I know Cass and Steph, and I know Jason.”

“Okay, I’m Tim.”

“A pleasure.”

Tim waits a bit, only to realize that Dick isn’t going to be bending backwards to talk to him, not when he’s spent the whole day with Steph and Cass, heck, even Jason.

“What were you doing?”

“Star gazing, it’s grounding, when I’m…” Dick trails off.

“Gazing at the sky is  _grounding_?”

“Okay, you know what? Do you hate me?”

“ _No.”_

Dick blinks at the force behind the single syllable, and nods slowly, “Uh-huh, all right, ‘m just checking.” He pauses, watching Tim closely, and Tim carefully watches him back.

“What about the first boy, the one I hurt?”

“Damian?”

“Is that his name? Funny how I don’t know that, also; how many  _are_ you?”

“We’re… five, without you.”

Dick nods a bit, looks back out the window, and Tim watches him closely. He’s rougher than Tim expected him to be, but really, he hadn’t expected much at all.

“We don’t know what we’re doing, we expected this to be just… I don’t even know, but we didn’t think  _you’d_  be a problem, we can’t even find out how you got like this.”

“I think…” Dick frowns, and Tim listens, nudging him a bit.

“Tell me.”

“I think… that I’m not real.”

Tim feels his skin tingle, something cold inside him nods its head, because yeah, that’s a good explanation.

“I can’t remember  _real_  things.”

“Steph told me about that, and I’m… sorry, I don’t know why that is.”

“But I remember things I shouldn’t, like the code for that safe, and how to drive a car,  _I know how,_ but I know I never learned it. I know constellations up there that my dad never told me about, someone else did, and I can’t remember how I know them.”

“… I think I’m starting to understand.”

“Explain it to me then, because I have no idea what my brain is doing.”

“It’s just not time-travel, like we originally thought. It’s like your brain rewinded, retreated into it’s own memories a bit when you shrunk, but those memories, naturally, eroded over time, and you mix up the present with the past because  _that’s natural_ , you can’t look back without… retrospection?” Tim finds that his hands are moving regardless of his attempt to stay composed, but it’s helping, because Dick looks less harsh, his face evens out.

For a moment, but then he changes again.

“It’s like they say, hindsight is 20/20, and for you right now, I think it means that you’re mixing it all up, because your subconscious knows you aren’t really a kid.”

Dick’s face crumples, and he starts breathing heavily, like Steph said he did the last time he tried to remember.

“Then I  _am_  real.”

Tim panics a bit, and awkwardly puts an arm around Dick’s shoulders, but it’s hard because Dick is facing him, and Tim’s a bit too far away.

Dick’s still keeping his distance.

Tim takes a deep breath, and moves in closer, like Dick might have if they were switched.

“Okay, so I’m just… messed up a  _little_  bit, not as bad as it could be.” Dick looks up at Tim, from under the arm slung around his shoulders, and it’s close to what Tim would have expected, before all this; it’s a sweet face and trusting eyes, and he snorts at the statement.

“Isn’t that just the  _whole_  truth, right there?”

“What?”

He doesn’t elaborate, leaves Dick to stew in frustration, as revenge for the cave-exploration disaster. They were down there for hours looking for him, and then they had gone upstairs to find him and the girls and  _Jason_ crowded around a bowl of popcorn and dry cereal, watching The Emperor’s New Groove.

Tim can still feel the urge to break things, but he keeps his arm around Dick, and listens as his brother’s slightly accented voice prattles on about ‘the current state of the future’.

Apparently Jason needs some love, Steph needs to have her own room, but she can sleep in his room if she wants ( _can she, Tim?)_  and Cass can join them, but she has her own room so there’s really no point, unless they want a sleepover in which case Tim is also welcome, but could they invite Damian too?

Tim falls asleep to this, and later he wakes up with his head on the pillow, and his body covered in blankets.

Dick is at the window again, gazing up at disappearing stars, and the rising sun is coloring the room orange.

Dick shifts, so Tim shuts his eyes again, he keeps his breathing even, even when he feels the hovering presence of Dick leaning over him.

He tries not to gasp when something hits his forehead clumsily, and realizes belatedly that it’s Dick’s mouth.

“I think we’re brothers, you know?”

Tim knows.

He reaches up and brings Dick down, crushing him to his chest, and mutters out a string of curses, because it turns out he’s still half-asleep.

Freaking brat, freaking  _asshole_ , and Dick burrows his face in Tim’s neck, childish insults streaming from his mouth. He presses a dumb kiss, or maybe just his face, into Tim’s neck, partially from the relief that there’s  _hope_. Mostly because he just wants to, because it’s just what he feels like doing. Tim grumbles a lot, but he falls back asleep quickly.

They’re both too embarrassed to look at one another in the morning, and that’s how Bruce finds them.

-

Things start looking up after that, because Dick thinks that maybe,  _maybe_  he can believe what Bruce meant when he said: “they’re your family.”

It all began with Steph, but Tim seems to have shoved a few things back into place.

Damian’s another story. He’s rough and cold, avoiding Dick like it’s his hobby, and it probably is. Things don’t get easier with him, but Dick corners him finally, one question on his mind.

“Your guard was down, not that it changes things, I would have still taken you down, but you weren’t ready.”

Damian stares at him, from his seat at the desk. He’s drawing, it seems, he has a huge sketchbook out and he’s watching Dick coldly, eyes level and blank.

“I didn’t think I was facing someone who could hurt me."

Dick feels his blood run cold, and he comes to stand by the desk, carefully not peeking at the drawing. He doesn’t need to betray this kid anymore.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, it made sense.” Damian looks at his drawing, and Dick keeps his eyes away from it.

“You’re super cute.”

“What.”

“I’m making it up to you.”

“ _No.”_

“I am, do you want to play? We can spar?”

Damian’s looking at him again, less levelly, less blankly; his mouth is twitching in a kind of funny way. Like Bruce’s used to, when Dick would bother him in the cave.

“Fine, and  _this_  time, I’ll be ready.”

“Bring it on.”

-

He’s in bed again, and he feels like it’s the end. His head is really light, and his vision blurs sometimes, like when he looks up sharply to see the man at his windowsill.

“Go away.” He doesn’t want anyone here when he leaves.

He suddenly doesn’t know how right Tim was, because what if he goes, and then just… stops existing.

Like death, but not even that kind, because he wasn’t really real in the first place.

He had hugged Bruce, Alfred and Cass goodnight, he’d smothered Tim and Steph’s necks, and shoved Damian jokingly, and they had all watched him like he was saying goodbye. He’d been there three days, but they’d all been waiting, since the moment Bruce traced the contamination in the blood samples to Ivy.

They all knew it would wear off.

They let him go up to his room on his own, and he only fell once while going up the stairs.

His head’s still spinning, and he knows,  _he’s so sure_  that he’s real, but what if what if he’s wrong.

“Hey, hey look at me, Dick.” Jason grabs his wrist, and Dick realizes he was scratching at his arms.

“We’ll be right here—-“ he stops. Jason realizes the issue, it’s not that they’re leaving; it’s not that they’re in any danger. Jason snorts, “Look at you acting selfish."

Dick glares at him, but the calmness in Jason’s manner is putting him at ease.

Jason knows about fears like these.

“ _You’ll_  be here, same as always, you’ll be with us.”

“You know? I thought they hated me, Jay.”

Jason makes a face at the sudden familiarity in Dick’s tone, in the use of the nickname. It’s unexpected.

“But Tim really,  _really_  gets things, and Damian just needed time, and a reminder that he trusts me, Bruce is the same as ever, and Steph… I didn’t expect Steph.” Dick grins, “But she was really awesome, I’m gonna be expecting her a lot from now on, Tim and Damian be darned.”

“Dick… are you… back?”

Dick suddenly gets a bit dizzier, and he falls back, feels Jason catch him.

“I have no idea, but I feel a lot more real right now.”

“Go to sleep, you dirt-bag.”

“I think I’ll be back in the morning.”

“I’m not sticking around that long, I’ll see you the next time duty calls.”

“Or the next time you blow up your own dumb microwave.”

“Go to sleep, I’m used to ovens and good honest stoves, none of that radiation bullshit."

“ ’s not how it works, Jay.”

Dick watches the world go black, and feels the weight on his side lessen, and disappear.

-

He wakes up much less sore, and sporting a good amount of stubble. Strange.

The weight on his head and mind is gone, mostly, and he feels… okay.

Well then.

Clearly, in order to celebrate that he indeed  _did_  exist, and that he was  _back_ , as well as the fact that he was loved (TIM, Cass, Damian,  _Steph?_  and even flipping  _Jason)_ , he needed to go rub this new facial development all over everyone’s neck.

He wonders if any of them have ever received beard-burn.

His mood falls only a little bit when he realizes that he never got that sleepover he wanted. He wonders if he ever will, for a moment, but he shakes himself, laughs at himself.

That’s not an  _obstacle_ , not at all. He’ll  _take_  this family, he’ll remake it (he has help now, he thinks of Steph and Cass, and  _Jason)_ , because they gave him a taste of it, a broken half finished, half burnt  _taste,_ and that was their first mistake. Or maybe it was the first thing they did right. 

He’s back for more, and he bolts down the stairs, falling twice and flipping back up.

He runs into the dining room, and watches as their faces change when they see him. 

Dick laughs.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr mirror](http://maladictive.tumblr.com/post/74660943126/the-stars-dont-even-matter)


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